A downer for tobogganers

An Enthusiast Finds It Tough Sledding As Cook County Razes Its Beloved Runs

IT LOOKS JUST LIKE A PUBLIC RESTROOM or some nondescript outbuilding where Cook County Forest Preserve employees store shovels and rakes. But the small stone structure nestled beside a winding road in the Bemis Woods was once the mainstay of a winter amusement park.

Perched on the bank of a steep hill, the little building held aloft two toboggan chutes, frozen rollercoasters bereft of brakes and operated by cold-weather carnies, who parents suspected had more than coffee in their Thermoses. We riders eschewed seat belts and safety harnesses as we boarded sleds built to go in one direction--down--as fast as possible while holding too many people at once.

The little stone building is still there. A door on its south face still reads WARMING STATION. But memories are all that's left of tobogganing in Chicago. The chutes at Bemis

Woods and three other local facilities were shuttered in recent years, and in the past few months crews began razing them.

Who's to blame? That depends on whom you ask. Budget crunches and government mismanagement? Our safety-crazed, litigious society? Mother Nature, whose stinginess with snow in this era of global warming has meant fewer opportunities to ride?

Blaming is a lot less fun than tobogganing.

Winter weeknights were the best. (The sky is always black and the snow is deep and white in my memories.) I'd be both terrified and thrilled as we four brothers would interlock legs, then cling with mittened hands to the ropes running down the sides of the toboggan as our dad, sitting up front, would signal to the operator we were ready.

The operator would pull a cigar from his mouth--they always smoke cigars in my memories--signal to his partner in the booth, and the barrier at the launching spot would drop. No turning back now.

The sled would lurch for a second before momentum and ice and slope would combine into a rush of wind and adrenaline and sound--a roar of wood against ice amplified by the walls of the chute, which plunged down the bank before spitting you out to a slick runway carved into a canyon of bare trees.

When the sled would skid to a halt a mile away (rides are always epic in my memories), we'd race back up the snow-packed steps as fast as cumbersome boots would let us to lurch and rush and roar again.

Tobogganing was becoming antiquated even in the late '70s, though I couldn't have understood that as a kid. I did grasp that it felt dangerous. That's because tobogganing is dangerous. A leg jarred free from interlocking would bend in ways that make surgeons rich. Bumps in the runway would send us airborne into that black sky.

Danger and fun have always been bedfellows. Danger and county-funded recreation are not.

One rainy night last month, driven by the desire to see what remained of my winter amusement park, I turned onto the road winding back into Bemis Woods, where a Western Springs squad car lay in wait. I had to convince the wary officer that I was interested only in inspecting what remained of the chutes, rather than taking part in some nefarious activity that he was there to prevent.

He obliged. I went looking with a floodlight. The wooden chutes have been ripped out, leaving strips of muddy earth through the clearing down the hill. A few broken boards jut from what once was the launching spot, like teeth that had been knocked out with a sucker punch.

At the base of the little stone building is a sign, uprooted and lying face down in a puddle--WARNING! NO TOBOGGANING!--which has been rendered ironic. Yellow caution tape twists in the rain.

I'd like to say that I could still hear the terrified, thrilled screams that provided the soundtrack of this place when it was operating. But that sound in my head was just the wind.

I'm hardly a sentimentalist. I don't bemoan progress or cling to nostalgia. And I didn't even ride the toboggan chutes every year that they were operable. But it was important to know you could. It was important to know that, tucked behind a curtain of cottonwood beside bustling Ogden Avenue and the Tri-State Tollway, you could hit speeds that maxed out at 30 mph but felt like 300 atop vehicles that were little more than baseboards.

Resting in the rafters of my parents' garage, less than a mile from Bemis Woods, is our family toboggan, a seven-seater Adirondack with duct tape patching up rips in the padded seats. We've had it forever--beneath the cobwebs is our old phone number written in marker (482-8180), no area code needed because everybody was 312.

Chances are the toboggan will stay there indefinitely. It's useless now, as pointless as trying to assess blame on the Forest Preserve District or on County Board President Todd Stroger, his father, John, Mother Nature or ourselves for letting this weird, wonderful winter sport go the way of the woolly mammoth.

There won't be any more nights spent at that little stone building tucked into Bemis Woods. No tobogganing when my kids are old enough to ride with me. Not around here, anyway. Hell, there might not even be any snow.